Am I unique?

Question

0 I am a native speaker of English from the US. I recently discovered that what I thought to be perfectly normal for me may not be the norm for everyone. Upon analysis, I have come to realize that when I pronounce a word with /n/ followed by (unvoiced) /s/, I sneakily and ever so slightly insert /t/ between the two sounds.  02br02br00Thus, 'prince' and 'prints' sound alike when I say them. 02br00So do 'attendance' and 'attendants'. 02br00And ‘patience’ and ‘patients’. 02br00Likewise, 'Mount Saint Helen' and announcement have the same sound. 02br02br00Other examples of my speech: 02br00insurance, nuisance, intelligence, ounce, rinse,  02br02br00I have tried to say the words of the questionable /t/ without that additional sounding, trying to glide from the /n/ to the /s/, but I find it totally unnatural. 02br02br00Dictionaries do not include /t/ in their pronunciation guides of the words 'prince' or 'announce', but then they do not use the International Phonetic Alphabet as their indicators.  02br02br00Nobody has ever "caught" me on this: I'm the one who brought up the idea that 'prints' and 'prince' are pronounced the same. My question! Is this a peculiarity of mine only (apparently unnoticed by others) or a phenomenon that exists in general and is so covert that most people don't recognize it?  Remember: my /t/ slips in ever so lightly; it not a strong sound, but I hear it and I feel it as well. 02br02br00I'm hoping for answers from those with at least some study of linguistics, although others may find it interesting to say the words while paying close attention. And, if you speak from some authority (degree or study in linguistics, I'd appreciate knowing that).  0-

LanguageLover · Accepted Answer

0 Hi Philip, welcome to the forum. 02br
00The pronounciation of "prince" and "prints" are so similar, as you said, the "t" sound you pronounce is very weak. And considering the redundancy in everyone's speach (it is about %70 in my language, I don't think that it would be less than %50 in English), you can figure out why nibody has mentioned that to you. I mean that they have not noticed it because they do not need to hear that particular "t" to distinguish which one you are uttering, it is so obvious from the context, and they hear it as the same phonetic pattern that they expect, unless they are linguistics who want to transcript your speach. 02br
00And every change in a language starts from somewhere. As long as you are the only, or one of the few people who pronounce it in a specific way different from the norm, there won't be a language change. However, as soon as it gets common, we can say that a change is taking place. And as you know, dictionaries record the pronounciation of the majority, not the individuals. It doesn't matter if it uses the IPA or another system. 02br
00The reason why you are pronouncing it this way is unclear, just wanna mention that this sound exists in the phonemic system of some languages, for example German. 02br
00BTW, I hold a degree in linguistics, though I am not a linguist. 02br
00Good luck, 0-

CalifJim · Answer

0 The /t/ in question (between /n/ and /s/) is but one of many "sycophant consonants" which occur naturally because of the way we must make transitions between consonants with certain movements of mouth, tongue, lips, etc. Dictionaries usually transcribe something fairly close to phonemes, not phones, so these will not normally appear in them -- not even necessarily if IPA is used, unless it is a very tight transcription. 02br
02br
00The transitions which are most likely to generate sycophants are from nasals to fricatives. The sycophants are all plosives. The first three are the unvoiced series, the next three the voiced. In the voiced series it seems easier to emphasize or de-emphasize the sycophant at will (for some anyway). The phenomenon is more common in the unvoiced series. In many cases, the articulatory organs simply pass so quickly through the position which forms the sycophant that the associated sound is barely heard, if at all. 02br
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00This phenomenon is common to all languages. It is related to movements of the tongue and lips necessary for consonant transitions in any language, and not to the characteristics of any specific language. 02br
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00Nasal...Sycophant Fricative 02br
00...m.........p............ f, th, s, sh 02br
00...n..........t............. th, s, sh 02br
00...ng........k.............th, s, sh 02br
00...m.........b.............z 02br
00...n..........d.............z, zh 02br
00...ng.........g............z 02br
02br
00Note that English orthography sometimes shows the sycophant, sometimes doesn't. 02br
02br
00mpth: warmth (sycophant 'p' not written) 02br
00mps: glimpse (sycophant 'p' is written) 02br
00mpsh: New Hampshire, redemption (sycophant 'p' written) 02br
00ntth: tenth (sycophant 't' not written) 02br
00nts: pence, fence, ounce, answer, Linz, ... (sycophant 't' not written) 02br
00nts: pants, amounts, ... ('t' written) 02br
00ntsh: tension ('t' not written) 02br
00ntsh: inch, pinch, ... ('t' incorporated within the "ch" = "t" + "sh", so 'indirectly' written) 02br
00ngkth: length, strength ('k' not written) 02br
00ngks: linx, manx ('k' incorporated within the "x" = "k" + "s", so indirectly written) 02br
00ngksh: anxious (as above) 02br
00mbz: lambs (sycophant 'b' is written) 02br
00ndz: lends, bends ('d' written) 02br
00ndz: lens, Ben's ('d' not written) 02br
00ndzh: injure, danger, engine ('d' incorporated within the "j" or "g" = "d" + "zh" ) 02br
00nggz: rings, sings, ... ('g' not written, or rather, the written 'g' serves a double purpose: to velarize the 'n' to 'ng' and then as a barely heard sycophant connecting to the 'z') 02br
02br
00I cannot hear, nor easily produce, any difference between "prince" and "prints". I don't believe anyone else can either! However, the voiced counterpart is troublesome: I can almost convince myself that there is a difference between "bends" and "Ben's", although I think in speech at normal speed (not too careful about pronunciation), they are the same. 02br
02br
00CJ 0-

MrPedantic · Answer

0 "Some day my prints will come", as a friend of mine said, when the lab lost his holiday snaps. 02br
02br
00I find a tiny difference between 'prints' and 'prince'. In the latter, the /t/ sound is more or less a glottal stop; in the former, the tongue just touches the teeth. 02br
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00(Maybe BrE is more glottal generally.) 02br
02br
00Sometimes I hear 'ung-yen' for 'onion'. Is that a related phenomenon? 02br
02br
00MrP 0-

Philip · Answer

0 Thanks, Cali. In the case of 'injure', etc., I think the sound is, actually "d+zh" and has nothing to do with the preceding 'n'. 'Judge', for example. 02br
02br
00I had an explanation from a separate message board that I'll share with y'all. 02br
02br
00Quote: 02br
00Voiceless stop insertion (English): Between a nasal consonant (n,m,ng) and a voiceless fricative (s,f,th,sh), a voiceless stop with the same place of articulation as the nasal (p,t,k) is inserted. 02br
02br
00From: Language Files, eds. Stewart & Vaillette 02br
02br
00So this means that: 02br
00Dance /dans/ --> [dants] 02br
00hamster /hamstr/-->[hampster] 02br
00lance /lans/ --> [lants] 02br
00strength /strength/ -->[strengkth] (I only sometimes add the k..I had to try it a few time before I had a natural sound. In my accent I delete the ng sound altogether and say [strentth] 0-

CalifJim · Answer

0 01blockquote

00In the case of 'injure', etc., I think the sound is, actually "d+zh" and has nothing to do with the preceding 'n'. 'Judge', for example. 12blockquote

12br
02br
00I think one of the sound values of "j" or "ge" is, and was historically much more so, "zh". That's why the "d" was added in such words as "ledge". Without it, the sound (back then, historically) would have been "lezh". A similar phenomenon, also related to French, is the insertion of the "t" before what used to be the "sh" sound, spelled "ch": "catch". Without the "t", it would have been a rhyme with "cache". 02br
02br
00CJ 0-

LanguageLover · Answer

0 Hi CJ, 02br
00I'm not sure about the history of those sounds, wheather they were pronounced as "lezh" and "cache" or not. However, there is another explenation why these sounds are usually displayed with those spellings. As you know, both "dzh" as in "injury" and "tsh" (I do not have an IPA-enabled keyboard)or "tch" as in "match" and your example are stop fricatives, a combination of the stops "d" and "t" and fricatives "zh" and "sh". If you pronounce the stop-fricative sequence, it would give you something very similar to our stop-fricatives. In the IPA system they also just combine the stops and fricatives signs to show the stop-fricatives. I think that's why they are written in this way in our texts. (In German, "sch" is prounced as "sh" in English, and "tsch" as "ch") 0-

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